Sabre To Use Actuate To Speed Report DevelopmentSabre To Use Actuate To Speed Report Development

Sabre Holdings Corp., the travel-reservation service, said Wednesday it will use reporting software from Actuate Corp. to create and deliver electronic reports, tickets, and other content to 70 airlines and 60,000 travel agents worldwide. The system is scheduled to be in production by midyear.

"Our expectation is that it can handle up to 200 pages per second," says Randy Potts, Sabre's technology solutions VP. Financial details about the deal weren't disclosed.

Sabre programmers now use tedious, time-consuming coding techniques to develop reports and other content such as reservation forms that appear on agents' computer screens. The Actuate 6 software will automate the process of creating and revising those reports, reducing Sabre's programming expenses and allowing it to respond more quickly to the needs of its airline and travel-agent customers, Potts says.

Sabre is building a 2.5-terabyte data store, based on the same Himalaya servers and NonStop software that run its reservation systems, which will hold 13 months of ticketing data that Actuate will tap into. Actuate will run on Windows servers.

Initially, Actuate will provide airlines and travel agents with audit reports about ticket-sales activity and payments, data they use to monitor business and reconcile charges. In the future, Potts says, the system can be used to make reports and other content available through Web sites and portals.